


The Different Colors of the Stars

by lauawill



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauawill/pseuds/lauawill
Summary: Soooo ... This is how I spent my Easter Sunday. A direct follow-on to "Wanderers Still." You must read that first for this to make any sense at all. There will be more parts, but I make no promises as to when or how many. I just wanted to share this with you today. Enjoy.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 17
Kudos: 92





	The Different Colors of the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> A direct follow-on to "Wanderers Still." Read that first!

“The Different Colors of the Stars”  
April 12, 2020

The bright ribbon of the Milky Way illuminated the beach long after the torrent of the Perseids had peaked and slowed to one per minute, one every few minutes, one every hour.

Kathryn, lying on her back with Chakotay’s arm draped across her belly, skin to skin under the blanket, watched the sky. She marveled, as she always had, always would, at the sheer number of the stars, their brightness and hues. She picked out a few familiar constellations – Lyra, Sagitta, Aqulia – and smiled to herself.

“I want to give your stars back to you,” he’d said. She’d accepted the gift and the astonishing thoughtfulness behind it, but now, hours later, she realized that she’d stopped thinking of them as “her” stars long ago. Gently, mindful of his slumber, she caressed the warm arm that held her close. These stars … these stars were _their_ stars. Their past and their future forever intertwined, a bright tapestry of memory and anticipation, dazzling in its many colors.

Kathryn rolled to her side to face the man curled around her. She wriggled into his warmth and pressed a kiss to the base of his throat. He shifted and pulled her closer, her head tucked under his chin.

“You cold?” he whispered.

Kathryn placed her palm over his heart. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay,” he murmured, folding the blanket around them both. “Too happy to sleep much.” She heard the smile in his voice.

“Me too.” She tried and failed to suppress a snort of laughter. “But after all these years … a sleeping bag full of sand with our crew just a few meters down the beach?”

He shrugged, and she felt the movement as a shift of muscle and bone around her. “Seems fitting, though.” He ran his fingers through her hair and placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “Seems perfect, actually.”

“But the impropriety of it, Chakotay. The inappropriateness.”

“Human beings being human, Kathryn,” he said. “No one cares. And all the kids were asleep by then. Miral, Naomi, Mike’s boys … even Harry.”

Kathryn slapped him lightly on the arm. “You’re a terrible influence.”

“I only aim to please, Admiral.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt of that, Captain,” she said, and wriggled against him. He exhaled a sharp breath and then he was lifting her easily to straddle him, his hands kneading her hips, then spanning her ribcage, then pulling her down to him, down and down, until she felt the rhythm of his body as if it were her own.

Then they were both quiet for a time, listening to the waves lap against the shore. The cry of a single killdeer floated up from the beach. Kathryn lay on her side, one arm and leg thrown across him. Under her cheek and palm, his chest rose and fell with a regularity that threatened to lull her into sleep, but she was reluctant to let this moment go. Not yet.

She raised her head to look at his face, all shadows and planes in the starlight. “Tell me about her,” she said. “Tell me about _Maria Mitchell_.”

He regarded her with surprise. “You’ve seen the schematics. You know the specs as well as I do.”

“The specs, yes,” she replied. “But I haven’t been on board yet. I haven’t seen her, not the way her Captain sees her. Tell me about her, Chakotay.”

He smiled and folded one arm behind his head. He closed his eyes. “She’s smaller than _Voyager_ ,” he began, “and not as sleek. But she’s got spunk. She’s _Nova_ class, but next generation _Nova_. A Cochrane warp core that’ll do Warp 9 for 12 hours – better speed than the original _Nova_ designs, and for longer duration.”

His voice grew more animated as he warmed to his subject. “And she’s more than just a flying sensor platform. Her central processing core is state-of-the art. More powerful than anything either of us has had access to in our lives. She’s got labs that can be reconfigured any way we want to use them. One of them is already being refit for Astrometrics. And the others … The Doc’s already planning a xenobiology lab and bringing in equipment that I barely understand. She’s got space that can be converted for underwater observation, low-gee atmospherics, even separate environmental controls for studying flora and fauna that would die in an oxygen-rich environment. Anything we want, we can do on that ship. Anything we find, we can study and understand.”

“Sounds incredible.”

He rolled over just enough to look her in the eyes. His enthusiasm was palpable. “You’re going to love her, Kathryn. You’re going to love all of it. I can’t wait to take you to meet her in person.”

She gave her head a fond shake. “You’re like a little boy with a new toy.”

“A lot of new toys.” He ran a warm hand down her spine. “I am the luckiest man in the Universe tonight.”

“What would you have done if I had said ‘no’ to your proposal?” He gave her a piercing, pointed look. “Your plan,” she amended with a smile. “We’ll talk proposals later.”

He kissed her nose and settled back onto the pillow, his eyes on the stars above. “Truthfully? I would have cried a little. Laughed at my long string of bad luck. And then I would have had the maintenance crew pull the giant bathtub out of the Captain’s quarters.”

Kathryn laughed. “Oh, Chakotay. Ever the optimist.”

“I learned from the best.”

“Flatterer.”

He chuckled and pulled her close. She reveled in the warmth of his body, but the night around them had begun to grow chilly. A breeze wafted up from the lake, and they both shivered.

“Now I’m cold,” he said.

“So am I. And I have sand in places where there definitely should not be sand.”

“That sounds uncomfortable.”

“You have no idea.”

“Actually,” he said, squirming beside her under the blanket, “I think I do. Should we drag the sleeping back into the tent?”

“It’ll still be full of sand.” Kathryn sat up, the blanket held across her chest, and gazed down the quiet beach toward the other tents, the coals of the doused campfire, and the cabins. “But my cabin has a bed and a bathtub.”

He sat up next to her. “Do you know which one is yours?”

“It was on the PADD with the map.”

“The one you fried when you dumped your coffee on it?”

Kathryn shrugged. “I have the entry code memorized. Maybe we can just … try them until we find the right one?”

“And risk waking up half the crew?”

She stood up and wrapped the blanket around her. “Come on, Chakotay. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“On the Bridge of my ship!”

Kathryn laughed. “Race you!” And she took off down the beach, the trailing edge of the blanket clutched in her fist.

“You’re completely insane, Kathryn!” He barked out a short laugh of surprised glee. “And I’ve been wanting to tell you that for _years_. Wait up!”

She glanced back in time to see him pick up the sleeping bag only to have their discarded clothing slide to the sand. He cursed under his breath, plucked his swimming trunks out of the sand and pulled them on, and kicked the rest of their belongings into his tent, including the abandoned sleeping bag.

Then he was beside her again, taking her hand in his so that she dropped the tail of the blanket. He was running along the beach with such a boyish, delighted expression on his face, she couldn’t help but grin in return. They darted among the tents, past the fire ring, and up the low dune towards the cabins, by turns laughing and shushing each other, their feet sinking silently into the soft sand.

The very first cabin they tried opened when she scurried up the steps and punched in her memorized code. In the soft light of the Milky Way, he unwound the blanket from her body and draped it over the porch railing. She hooked her index finger into the waistband of his swim trunks and pulled him inside. The door closed behind them with a soft click, barely audible over the sounds of the wind and the water.

In their haste, in the happy haze of their newfound connection and the rich promise of the future before them, neither of them saw the Paris-shaped shadow lurking on the porch of the cabin next door. The shadow chuckled softly. “I’ll be damned,” he said to the sleepy shadow-Miral in his arms. “I’ll be damned.”

And in the morning when the Captain and the Admiral emerged from the same cabin and ambled hand-in-hand down the beach for breakfast by the fire, everyone smiled … but no one said a single word.

=/\=

**Author's Note:**

> For me, Star Trek has always been about hope for a brighter future. I feel like we could all use a little hope these days. So, being unable to leave the house at the moment and for the foreseeable future, my aim here is to go on a bit of an adventure of hope and optimism, Trek style. Maybe it'll help us all. Stay healthy, friends, and wash your dang hands.


End file.
